Currently, many persons travel from place to place with portable computing devices that are capable of establishing network connections. For instance, many people carry notebook computers and/or personal digital assistants (PDAs) along with them outside of their homes or offices.
Occasionally, such persons wish to print data from their portable computing devices to printing devices they encounter as they move from place to place. For example, an employee of a given company may wish to print a document to a printer in a conference room in which the employee is attending a meeting. Alternatively, a businessperson may wish to print to a given printer made available in a hotel or airport.
Although such printing may be feasible where the portable computing device is capable of establishing a connection with a network to which the printing device is connected, various impediments to use of the printing device may exist. As a first matter, the user must normally have the network address of the printing device to establish a print path to the printing device. Without such information, the user may need to rely upon trial and error in selecting the correct printing device. Although this may not be difficult where few printing devices are connected to a given network, it would be inefficient to rely on trial and error where a multiplicity of such devices are connected to the network.
In addition to needing a network address, various software may need to be installed on the user's computing device in order to be able to use the printing device. For example, driver software and various applications that are used to control or configure the printing device may be necessary. As is known in the art, software is typically needed to translate and send jobs from a given user application to the printing device. Therefore, even if the user can determine the correct network address for the desired printing device, the user may not be able to use the printing device without first installing the necessary software. This task may require locating a network administrator who knows the location of the software and how to properly install it.
From the above, it can be appreciated that it would be desirable to have a system and method that facilitates printing to a local printing device from a portable computing device in situations in which a print path has not previously been established for that printing device.